one midnight-blue morning around 5:00 am...my brothers and aye were unslumbered by our pops who had an itching to thread some hooks and row out to the deep green fishing spot right off of the shore from our coral beach shanty...

cranky and tired we caved to our father’s slightly hidden excitement...dressed and readied ourselves for the summer early morning adventure...

my pops always brought an old brown leather and rusty box in which he kept his personal and secret possessions when he would go fishing...along with a small tackle box...

we helped him thread a few hooks…loaded the bait into the boat and set out to go catch some treats for dinner...he grabbed his bottle of rum and said he would use it to attract the "liddle creechaz of da sea"

my pops armed us out about one mile from the shore until he reached a dinghy marked "the field."

well, about one hour into the journey and about 6 throbbing mosquito bites later...my younger brother was complaining about being cold...my pops took the bottle of rum and poured it around the outside of the boat as an offering to the “wahtah”...

my pops told us that sometimes there were easier ways to have fun with fishing...and more expeditious...

he proceeded to take apart his fishing rod place it reverently on the floor of the boat and then...

he opened the brown leather box...

he said that it was important to finish the task at hand...

now, it was a new moon and just the glimmer of lights from the shoreline marked us against the briny liquid surface...so our vision was a bit dimmed by the midnight blue atmosphere surrounding our little row-boat...

my pops threw three objects into the water about 60 feet away from our spot...

in about 3 minutes we had enough fish for our breakfast...lunch and dinner...our nextdoor neighbor, eddie's chum collection...and the weekend's fish stew contest...

my mother was so pleased by the catch...but to this day is still puzzled by the fact that some of the fish were missing their eyeballs...strange.

needless to say...

it was the most fun aye have ever had fishing...

who would have thought such a marvelous catch could come from a couple of grenades near "the field"...blessed by some cheap rum....